[Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

Tue Mar 8 20:08:50 UTC 2011

Am 08.03.11 20:20, schrieb phoebe ayers:

> Most (all?) university libraries sign contracts with database/journal
> vendors restricting access to only faculty/staff/students at the
> university.

This may hold true for the U.S., but as far as Europe is concerned the
situation is different in some points. E.g., in Germany all residents
are entitled to access some commercial databases that a national license
has been obtained for, cf. <http://www.nationallizenzen.de/> and
<http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationallizenz>. What's more, university
libraries are open to all residents in its vicinity, offering on-line
access at least on campus to every user of the library.

As far as Wikipedia is concerned, the German chapter of Wikimedia has
just negotiated the first settlement for a premium database provider in
chemistry, see
<http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Kurier#Chemie_eLitstip_per_Codc.21>.
There are plans to expand this programme.

Apologies for the links provided in German only, please use a
translation service such as translate.google.com if you do not not speak
German.

Regards,
Jürgen.